


The Sky Is Open

by evocativecomma



Series: Conqueror [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Alternate Universe - Avatar Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-21 00:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6031116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evocativecomma/pseuds/evocativecomma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She slips on her old Rebel Alliance fighter helmet and peers through its fogged, cracked visor toward the horizon, wondering—not for the first time—if her family left her here on Jakku because they knew that the sands would protect her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I can't help but pull the earth around me

Rey has never seen a mountain, but she can imagine them, immovable and rooted deep in the earth. She feels those roots in her bones, guiding her as she climbs the dunes; she never puts a foot wrong in the shifting sand, even when the wind is so strong she can't see an inch in front of her face.

Sometimes, safe from prying eyes in the shadow of her AT-AT as the sinking sun leeches warmth and color from the landscape, she slips off her worn boots and plants her bare feet in the sand. The earth feels so much more real when she can touch it, but she doesn't dare do anything that might give her away to the scavengers swarming around Niima Outpost. She's seen others like her before, but never for long; they boasted—sometimes drunk, sometimes sober, never smart enough—about how Jakku would never make them weak because they could bend it to their will.

The deserts didn't break them, but when they tired of sleeping with one eye open, the scavengers descended like carrion and they ended their days bending the sands to someone else's will—short lives that made even the indentured workers grateful for their treatment.

///

She has been on her speeder for at least two standard hours. Her thin layers do little to protect her from the chill of Jakku's night air rushing by. Her legs are beginning to go rubbery and numb from the rattling vibrations of the ancient engine, and Rey knows she will regret holding her back and shoulders at such an angle, especially after the return journey; she wonders, even, if the exorbitant fuel expenditure is really worth it.

But finally she stops in a small, flat plain ringed by dunes, so far from Niima Outpost that she can't imagine anyone coming upon her. She strips the cowl from her face, her gloves and boots, and straps her quarterstaff to her back.

The little distance from her speeder to the center of the plain is bliss with the earth beneath her bare feet. Kneeling with her hands buried in the sand, Rey reaches out for the spark. It matches the one inside her, and when they connect she is suddenly aware of every grain of sand, the bedrock beneath her, even the planet's molten core far below. She breathes slowly and deeply, focusing on every rise and fall of her chest. Several minutes pass as she tries to block out the myriad sounds of the desert at night and find the gentle pulse of—

_There_. There is water beneath her and the coolness spreads through her fingertips until it feels like her veins are flooding. She stands, shaking out her hands and planting her feet firmly in the sand. Rey has never liked the feel of water under her skin; the earth is steady and certain, and it surrounds her, but where is the strength in something so scarce and unpredictable?

She curls her toes, grounding herself in the feeling of grit between them. She feels the edges of the rock layer worn away by the water and wills them to curl and pull and _move_ , to reach up to her as she reaches down.

One of Rey's feet comes down hard onto the earth and she throws both arms into the air, muscles straining as the ground begins to shake and shift, rising up beneath her and pulling the desert aquifer with it.

She opens her eyes, trying to remember when she closed them, and revels in the sight before her: a wide, shallow bowl of dusty black rock full of water, surrounded by brand new dunes of displaced sand. Rey allows herself a joyful whoop, stomping her foot again.

Exhaustion will come later, but exhilaration and the thought of having water for at least ten more cycles pushes her forward, skating through the sand almost effortlessly as she returns to her speeder for the cargo net full of bottles and canisters. She fills each as full as she dares and seals them carefully. Once they are safely lashed back to the side of the speeder, Rey turns back to the changed earth.

She drinks her fill from between her cupped palms and splashes water on her face and neck, despite the voice at the back of her head warning her against wastefulness. At this moment, water is unlimited, and she will hold it in her mind the next time she reaches for the canteen at her waist and finds only droplets.

The wind gusts suddenly, chilling the wet spot at the back of Rey's shift and pulling her from her moment of gluttony. She studies the stars briefly; dawn isn't nearly as far away as she'd like, and she only hopes whatever parts she can scavenge during the day will bring her enough of a portion to make up for a sleepless night.

The earth is always hungry to take back its own, and the desert swallows back its bedrock with only gentle coaxing; Rey presses her hands back to the ground and searches for the chill of water once again, waiting for the gentle heartbeat that means the aquifer is flowing properly. Her life depends on picking clean the carcasses of old freighters and battleships, but the same will never be true of the earth.

///

A scar runs along her left side—a jagged, angry thing that curves around her waist and reaches nearly to her navel.

Rey knows Imperial starships like she knows the freckles on her arms or the patterns of Jakku's stars and constellations—knows them better than the officers who once commanded them, and maybe the architects and engineers who built them. The solid catwalks and access shafts don't shift the same way the desert sands do, but sometimes she could swear that the creaking metal skeletons hum to her the same way. The cavernous Star Destroyer interior soars upward like a—cathedral, she thinks the word is, and sees gleaming spires and hears hushed singing somewhere deep in the back of her mind. Rey turns herself, suspended in the air to reach an untouched bank of data drives, trying to find the gusts of wind creating the music in the hollowed-out ship.

She turns herself just too far, swaying, and the line jerks. Pulls taut. Snaps. Rey is acutely aware of the air around her, rushing in her ears and taunting her grasping fingers as she falls.

It seems endless; she has a clear vision of her own broken neck, arms and legs pulled and twisted to gruesome unnatural angles. Her body, found and scavenged and abandoned, eventually devoured by the sands. Her AT-AT, emptied and reclaimed. The way of the desert.

Desperate, Rey tries to still her spirit and call for the solid, familiar earth, but she's still _falling_ , and the desert she has come to love and resent in equal measure seems so far outside the derelict vessel. Still, she reaches. She pulls. A few grains of sand, a stone—anything to try and break the fall.

The ancient Star Destroyer _shrieks_ , and the breath in her body is gone.

///

Rey's first thought is that being dead feels an awful lot like being alive. Her second is a raw animal scream that echoes so loudly it reverberates in her teeth.

She opens her eyes.

She has never seen so much blood in her life.

Her mind clears suddenly, and her only goal is to survive, to climb from the wreckage and make it back to where her family can find her.

She tears apart her cowl and the layers of her headscarf and the wraps around her arms. Her hands shake as she pries open the lid of her canteen; even as the water touches her skin, rinsing blood and sand and metal slivers from the wound, Rey's mind screams at the waste of something so precious. She binds her midsection—two broken ribs, she catalogs distantly—as tightly as she can and struggles to her feet.

She sits back down immediately, trying to steady herself on her left arm and biting back a cry as it seizes with pain and crumples beneath her. Drawing in heavy, gasping breaths, she tears a long strip from her tunic and bandages her wrist as best she can. There are bruises and superficial cuts all over her body, and a dizzying sore spot on the side of her head, but her thoughts are clear enough and her heartbeat is steady; she has never been hurt this badly, but she can feel her body shoring up its energy and knows she can at least make it back to her AT-AT. She drinks the last of her water and takes stock of the situation.

The broken line she'd fallen from hangs roughly twelve meters above; a quick look down shows fifteen meters or more left to fall. She is seated on a narrow girder bent away from the ships's hull and hanging at a downward incline; the edge nearest her is razor-sharp and coated in blood—her side throbs and Rey presses a hand to it.

She remembers… She remembers hanging at face-level under the data banks, nothing between her and the ground, the certainty of falling with nothing to save her. Again she hears the deafening shriek of rending metal and feels the humming pull of the earth within her, scarcely moments before impact, but—it's impossible.

The metal beneath her fingers buzzes, but it feels nothing like the alien slickness of water beneath her skin; there is…warmth, and a sense of familiarity Rey has only experienced when walking barefoot in the sand.

She shakes her head to clear it. She hit her head when she fell, and the distraction and confusion have brought with them fanciful, impossible theories when the only real explanation is that the girder had been there the whole time, and she simply hadn't been aware enough of her surroundings. The adrenaline keeping her conscious won't last forever, and the only thing she knows for sure is that staying here means dying here.

Rey inches slowly down the girder, favoring her left side, grateful that this had once been a major support beam, and its incline brings her closer to the ground without the need to plummet. When she runs out of beam, though, there are still two or three meters to the ground.

Not allowing herself any time to think, Rey grits her teeth and rolls off the girder, trying to angle her body so she lands on her right side. The impact is still jarring, rattling her teeth in her head and pulling at every overtaxed muscle. Rey whimpers.

Then she stands. She pulls her blue-lensed goggles up from her neck to her eyes, noticing that they're scratched, but not cracked. Slowly but purposefully, she drags herself back outside to her speeder. She heaves a stilted sigh of relief that it's where she left it, and the handful of parts she'd found in a downed TIE fighter shortly after dawn are still secured in the cargo net.

The ride back is agony, sand dragging across her bare skin and tearing at her myriad shallow cuts. The cold air as the sun sinks down bites at her face and slices her lungs with every labored breath, but the pain and chill of it keeps her awake until she reaches the relative safety of her shelter.

Inside, she bites down on a thick wad of threadbare blanket and nearly chokes on the fabric and her own screams as she stitches together the edges of the gash on her side; clear speeder-still liquor from one of the friendlier drifters who had passed through Niima Outpost serves as both anesthetic and disinfectant. Rey knots off her thread and cuts the tail with her belt knife, takes two long swallows of liquor, and passes out without washing the blood from her hands.

The next day, Rey carries her TIE salvage (and a small collection of parts she'd scavenged and buried as a contingency) to the Outpost; she painstakingly scrubs them clean and trades them for bandages and medicine as discreetly as she can.

She goes hungry for three days.

She does not return to that Star Destroyer for three years.

///

In three years, Rey has learned which risks to take and which to leave to break someone else's neck; she ties stronger knots and anchors her lines more securely. She has already been through three other derelicts that morning by the time she ties off and slides down into the Star Destroyer cathedral with a phantom ache in her left side. She does not allow herself to hesitate. Her focus is absolute, a combination of necessary safety and necessary distraction.

Last night, she dreamed of the island again, all green, moss-covered crumbling stones and crashing waves. She had stood with her bare feet squared on wet earth and stone and felt just as secure as she did on Jakku. The cool, bubbling slickness of the surrounding sea pulled at her fingertips and she had closed her eyes, ready to pull back—knowing that when she did, the water would follow her, not just the earth supporting it.

The Star Destroyer shudders around her and for the briefest moment panic grips Rey's throat and squeezes tight. She breathes slowly out through her nose and shakes her head.

Back at Niima Outpost, with one small envelope Unkar Plutt tells her once again just what he thinks of her day's work, and it's not worth the sweat she wiped from her brow this morning when she woke. She wishes, just once, that she could have done with him, crack his skull with her staff and leave him in a pyramid of sand to suffocate as surely as he is suffocating her. But even a quarter portion is better than starving, and she still dreams of seeing her family again someday, so she takes the meal packet and returns home.

It's not enough; it's never enough, and for a moment she allows herself to imagine a feast: clear, cool water; fresh, brightly-colored fruits that spill juice down her chin when she bites into them; meat and greens and cheeses and five different kinds of bread. Only for a moment, though.

In a few scant minutes, she will be drawn from the shadow of her AT-AT and into an argument with a Teedo over a small, indignant BB unit. She will hear, faintly, the echoing voice left over from her dream of the island as she contemplates what the next morning will bring: " _Rey, these are your first steps._ "

In this moment, though, she only slips on her old Rebel Alliance fighter helmet and peers through its fogged, cracked visor toward the horizon, wondering—not for the first time—if her family left her here on Jakku because they knew that the sands would protect her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I walked out of TFA the second time and I was like, "What if Rey was an Earthbender?" And I hadn't seen an AtLA AU in the fandom yet, so I decided to write one. Here we are, three months later, and I'm pretty sure there's like, fifty now, but I'm going to persist.
> 
> This first chapter is Rey-centric and the next will be Finn-centric, and at some point we're going to work our way to ridiculous and possibly completely unstructured OT3 fluff. No solid update schedule because my life is a nightmare, but chapter two should be up relatively soon.
> 
> I have a lot of ideas about how the Force and bending intersect in this 'verse, and they may or may not come up explicitly in the story, but if you want to hear about them, or you want to hear me babble about how great Rey is, come find me on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Title from AURORA's _Conqueror_ ; chapter title from Florence + the Machine's _Ship to Wreck_.


	2. No hope in the water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FN-2187 is the only waterbender in his squadron, and it is a weakness.

FN-2187 is the only waterbender in his squadron. He knows—every trooper knows—that this is a weakness, but he has been assured that if he lives up to his potential, it will become a strength. An asset. A source of power.

Fewer troopers know what this means, but FN-2187 has seen.

///

The trainee trooper refuses to submit her blaster for inspection; it freezes the breath in his chest. Since leaving the youth barracks, he has heard the word "no" so rarely it almost sounds like a foreign language—a short, half-swallowed word that echoes in the nearly empty hallway. Ducking into an alcove, FN-2187 watches the small trooper square her shoulders and lock her knees in the face of the officer towering over her.

Captain Phasma seems almost startled, but only for a matter of seconds, before she reaches out with one hand and clenches her fist tightly. The trainee lets out a choked whimper from the back of her throat and her arms begin to move; she moves slowly, every inch jerky and unnatural, accompanied by panicked breaths through her mask. She bends, kneels, and places her blaster at Phasma's feet. Phasma raises both fists in front of her chest before pulling them back sharply.

The trooper collapses sideways onto the gleaming floor, and the captain calls through her comm for a pair of officers to "escort" the unconscious trainee to reconditioning before sweeping down the hallway. She pauses momentarily in front of the alcove in which FN-2187 stands, knowing that if she looks, he cannot escape her. But Phasma merely adjusts her grip on the recently acquired blaster and continues.

FN-2187 stays hidden long after the trooper—KD-7072, his brain supplies belatedly—has been dragged away. His mouth tastes like blood; he's bitten his tongue.

He wonders if he was meant to see.

///

FN-2187 is the only waterbender in his squadron, and it is a weakness.

FN-2199 uses their standard-issue flint after lights out to create sparks that grow into fireballs that bounce playfully between their hands. In training, on the battlefield, Nines is "she," if not merely a designation; one day, FN-2003 forgets himself, "they" rolling off his tongue without thought, and immediately Nines grips his left wrist with a fresh spark in their palm and leaves a burn so intense that his knees crumple and he nearly falls—would have, had FN-2187 not been at his back. Eight-Seven supports him, and gives Nines a quick shove on the shoulder, forcing them to turn back around and continue the exercise or risk being seen as insubordinate in the face of the squadron leader.

Either it all happens so fast that no one monitoring the exercise sees anything, or no one cares. FN-2003 does not report to Medical, and no one approaches him for treatment.

That night, the barracks lit erratically by Nines' sparks, two troopers press their shoulders close on the floor between their bunks.

"Slip," Eight-Seven says gently, with none of the contempt of the other troopers spitting out the nickname. Slip doesn't answer, only flinches when Eight-Seven tugs at his elbow, gingerly holding his arm still and inspecting the burn. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Slip shudders, his eyes full of something Eight-Seven cannot name; instead of focusing on it for too long, he reaches for the canteen on his utility belt. He unscrews the lid and coaxes the water out, taking Slip's arm again.

When the water comes near, Slip flinches away again, and Eight-Seven moves the hand that had been at his elbow to his hand; Eight-Seven doesn't dare speak for fear of too many things to count, but he slowly strokes his thumb over the back of Slip's hand until the tension in him eases. Trying to telegraph his every movement and intention, Eight-Seven breathes out through his nose and lets the water wrap around Slip's injured wrist. The water glows slightly, and at first the burn flares an angrier shade of red; Slip hisses through his teeth and cannot quite swallow his whimper.

Eight-Seven is aware of the eyes of at least half the squadron on them in the dim light, but does not allow it to break his focus. They have been brethren for many years now, and they harbor many secrets much larger than this.

He feels more than sees the burn shrinking, the skin knitting back together. The water warms and his fingertips nearly burn, his blood rushing in his ears the way he imagines the sea might, if he ever gets the chance to see it. Concern welling in his chest, he pushes a little harder, encouraging the green-blue strands of the water to trace the muscle fibers and pull the edges of the burn in.

Deep below than the ravaged skin, there is a jagged edge, and Eight-Seven's focus stutters briefly; three drops of water fall to the concrete floor as he probes the disturbance. He remembers, then, that when they started training FN-2003's dominant hand was his left; he remembers advanced climbing drills, and the fall—the landing so hard that Slip's left bracer had cracked under his weight, the sound ripped from his throat still echoing in the back of Eight-Seven's head several years later. Since then, Slip has always lead with his right hand, like the rest of his unit. Since then, his aim and climbing skills have suffered greatly.

Eight-Seven presses the water deeper, trying with every bit of energy he has to fill the crack and make the bone whole again. But no matter how hard he pushes, coaxing and cajoling the power within him to just _fix it_ , it's like trying to break down a stone wall with only his hands. Standard medical training tells him that the only way to properly repair a broken bone that set incorrectly is to re-break it; even in the name of healing, the thought of causing such pain brings acid into Eight-Seven's mouth.

He pulls the water away and pours it back into the canteen, replacing the lid without looking at Slip, who is shaking out his arm and climbing under his blankets. Nines extinguishes their flames, and in the darkness the barracks fills with the hushed rustling of a dozen troopers settling into sleep an hour after lights out.

The tips of his fingers tingle, and Eight-Seven flexes his hands and wonders if this might be what it feels like to touch a star.

///

FN-2187 is the only waterbender in his squadron, and it is a weakness, and his squadron is the healthiest on Starkiller Base, with the best recovery rates.

On Pressy's Tumble, a mining colony on an asteroid so out of the way that Eight-Seven can't make any sense of why it could possibly matter to either the First Order or the Resistance, everything changes.

One of the targets tries to run—an illogical reaction, Eight-Seven thinks; there are only two doors to the room they're in, and it seems obvious that there would be stormtroopers posted outside of both. Even the non-benders of the stormtrooper corps are deadly, and the entire galaxy knows they would never do anything as… _stupid_ as leaving one of the exits unguarded.

The man doesn't make it to the door, though. FN-2000—Zeroes, who has warm golden-brown eyes and the easiest smile in the squadron—throws up both arms and the running man freezes, gasping. The gasps become wheezes, and come further and further apart as he falls to the ground, clawing at his throat. His face is a dully burning red smattered with patches of dark purple and bloodless white; his lips are turning blue. The room is frozen, the only sound the creaking of Zeroes' gloves as he closes his fists with slow finality. The man on the floor shudders, right leg twitching once, and stills.

Captain Phasma orders the rest of the squadron to fire. FN-2187's finger is on the trigger of his blaster, an Abednedo so gripped by terror that Eight-Seven can see the whites of their eyes across the room in his crosshairs. He hesitates, trying to reconcile Zeroes' sunny smile with what he just saw.

The Abednedo is the last living target in the room; in the face of his squad leader's stillness, FN-2003 raises his rifle and fires. The unit exits the mining complex, reboards the shuttle. Returns to Starkiller Base.

///

While the rest of his squadron celebrates their first field victory boisterously in the mess hall, cheering over their new status as an active stormtrooper unit, FN-2187 swims. He swims through evening meal and straight through the short recreation period before lights out, long past the point when his shoulders begin to scream in protest and his spine feels heavy and bent out of shape.

A small voice at the back of his head tells him that he needn't work so hard—the water will carry him if only he will make it.

From the first sign of his abilities, the First Order informed FN-2187 that bending is a tool and nothing more—the elements exist only to serve those superior beings capable of forcing them to submit.

Eight-Seven has never believed that.

Awake long after lights out, he draws the water from his canteen and lets it wind in long ribbons around his fingers and forearms, measuring his breaths until the cool pulse of the water against his skin matches the rhythm of the blood flowing beneath it.

The water speaks to him—he only has to _ask_ it when he has need.

///

Tuanul seems barely a few years—if they're lucky—from being swallowed by the indifferent wasteland of Jakku and its howling sands. The people, though, are fierce, steady in the face of their fear, even after Kylo Ren has struck down the proud old man who refused to bend to him.

Nines is reckless, almost dancing through the waves of fire in the wake of the flamers, forgoing the blaster at their side in favor of stoking the inferno with their hands and feeding it with screaming villagers. Eight-Seven can only think of how their nose wrinkles and the tips of their ears turn red when they laugh.

Zeroes doesn't run, instead lambasting villagers trying to flee with rough gusts of hot air, knocking them off their feet so he can shoot them more easily. Eight-Seven sees his wide, toothy grin and hears his rich voice singing a raucous marching song.

Beside him, Slip falls. It isn't the first time and it won't be the last. Only—

Slip is clutching his side and struggling for breath, and before Eight-Seven can open his canteen and reach for the water inside, Slip's hand is dragging across the faceplate of his mask, leaving a bloody red smear across his vision.

In the moments it takes for Slip's hand to fall to the ground, Eight-Seven sees everything: the dusty brown of Slip's skin and the curious curve of his dark eyebrows; the roll that Slip had stolen from the mess hall the night of Pressy's Tumble, giving it to Eight-Seven without a word; the jagged spur of bone deep in his left arm; his nervous habit of drumming out rhythms on his right forearm with the fingers of his left hand.

Eight-Seven struggles to his feet.

He can't fire. He can't _breathe_. He can't think for the suffocating heat of this armor, the flickering brightness of the village in flames, the cacophony of sparks crackling and blaster fire and shrieking voices and the thrumming of idling shuttle engines. He's vaguely aware of the prisoner trailing Kylo Ren, he's—

He's startlingly aware of Kylo Ren's gaze on him, and for several long seconds he might as well be stripped of armor and weapon and elemental power and every atom that makes him up. _He knows._ But Ren turns away, proceeds onto the shuttle that will return him to _Finalizer_.

Eight-Seven can't fire. He can't breathe. He can't think. He needs clean, cool air. He needs water. He needs silence.

He needs sleep, he needs Slip, he needs the squad he thought he knew back, he needs, he needs, he needs—

///

He needs to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow???  
> I honestly didn't expect more than like, five people to read this, and I'm kind of blown away by the response I've gotten so far. I wanted to get this chapter written and posted much sooner, but it's been a rough week so I've been doing a lot of writing in my head.
> 
> Just know: I see you, I appreciate you, I'm sending you love and kisses, and if you want to chat with me in the comments or on tumblr, I promise I don't bite.
> 
> Title from AURORA's _Conqueror_ ; chapter title from Laura Marling's _Hope in the Air_.
> 
> No solid update schedule; come find me on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)!


	3. Trapped between two lungs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe can't help feeling a little disappointed and indignant that his life and death will amount to a zero sum. In his younger, more hell-raising and rabble-rousing days, he'd assumed that his death would be significantly more ignominious and at least semi-public—even his father had; joining the Resistance had only strengthened the conviction. Here, in a corner about to be shot anonymously by a stormtrooper and probably spaced, it all just feels wrong.

The wagons creak and sway, the brightly painted wood swelling in the heat and humidity of the jungle air. Though the sun won't set for hours, a tall fire burns merrily, filling the forest with a chorus of pops and hisses in harmony with the chattering birds and buzzing insects. The camp and all its activity orbit the fire: tall, wide-shouldered women wearing many-layered skirts, their hair in intricate braids; men with broad, calloused hands and sunburned faces; children running barefoot and screaming their delight. Voices, too many to count, call back and forth through the clearing; someone, somewhere, is tuning a stringed instrument.

"Poe, come back right now!"

But Poe has already flung himself into the lap of one of the old women by the fire; she drops the stalk of maize she'd been holding and hugs him tightly. Shara Bey walks up after him, hands on her hips, trying to keep the smile off her face.

"Poe! How many times have I told you to _listen_? You're going to get in someone's way, or spook the animals."

Between his unruly mop of curls and the old woman's arm, Shara sees one of Poe's eyes—large and dark, glittering with mischief but also reasonably repentant. He wriggles free enough that she can see his whole face and rubs a chubby hand over his forehead. "Sorry, Mama," he says, lisping slightly.

Shara's smile breaks free then, and she sits down across the campfire from them, pulling a rough-woven basket of maize closer to her. She begins tugging at husks and silk, throwing them into the fire and returning the vegetables to the basket. Stories and conversation wash over her as she breathes in smoke and sweat. The tension drains from her shoulders.

On the other side of the fire, Poe turns to look into the face of the woman holding him. "Mama Frey, why've you been away so long?"

He brushes a small hand across her broad, flat nose and creased brow; her skin is as soft as the leather of his mother's favorite flight gloves. She looks down at him, her long white braid falling over her shoulder, and remembers him asking why her skin was so much darker than his own. _My people are children of the night sky_ , she had told him, _and we fell from out mother long ago. But our eyes are bright, for we each have a star inside of us, just here_ , and pressed her hand over his heart. _I see that same brightness in you, Poe Dameron_.

Mama Frey hums softly. Across the flames, Shara Bey watches her. "We go where the winds carry us. We carry our homes with us and walk the earth, to the edges of the sea. This continent is very wide, you know, so it takes us a long time to return to you." She smiles, and the wrinkles of her dark face nearly swallow her bright grey eyes.

Satisfied, Poe returns her smile, the gap between his front teeth more pronounced in the firelight. He clambers off her lap to sit on the ground beside her, pulling at the stubborn husk of a maize stalk and thinking about being able to carry your home on your back or hold it within you.

///

Summer on Yavin IV is unbearable for many, but for those who live there (and especially those who have grown up there) it is simply a fact of life. The solstice festival is one of the year's biggest celebrations, all color and light and sound, flower garlands and colored rockets and dancing to countless drums from dawn to dusk on the longest day of the year. Poe delights, because the _Viajeros_ always return to the settlement for solstice, and he and the other children spent the night leading up to the festival draping the trees with lights.

With the longer days comes heat. Poe grows used to the sweat at the back of his neck and the bend of his knees, the way his lightly-woven shirts stick to him like a second skin and his hair never seems to dry. He spends his days in the rivers around the settlement and climbing the tallest trees he can find in search of even the slightest breeze.

Finally, it becomes too much, and he wakes just after dawn to his father throwing open the sliding exterior doors all around the house. In the hazy golden light Poe sees Kes Dameron outlined on the threshold; Shara drifts into the room and leans into his side, pressing her hand into his bare back. Poe pulls the blanket up to his eyes and pretends to sleep.

It isn't long before he "wakes" to the warm wash of his mother's breath on his face; there's a gleam in her eyes that matches the one in his own, one that says, _I know your game, but don't worry_. Shara swings him up onto her shoulders even though he's too big and they stand in the doorway until Kes returns from one of the back closets of the house. Poe can feel his mother's every breath, track the steady expanding and contracting of her lungs in the shifting muscles keeping him aloft.

Kes breaks the silence first, throwing down an armful of heavy black nets onto the woven floor mats; Poe knows now that the doors will stay open, and for a while the settlement will live even closer than usual, sharing their air and sounds and space through open walls and windows. When Shara sets him down, Poe rushes to the tangle of poly-mesh and pulls at the first corner he can reach, tugging a net free and dragging it over to his parents. While they go about the house fitting each one in place, Poe sits in the center of the floor and undoes knots, checking the best for damage and wear.

The curtains, durable black ply-mesh, reflect some measure of the oppressive jungle heat back outside and away from the house—more importantly, though, they allow the settlers to open up their houses to more moving air without being overwhelmed by Yavin IV's many airborne insects. To Poe the curtains mean falling asleep to the humming of insects and the warm, earthy smell of a sudden summer squall. At times like this, he and his parents leave all of the interior doors open all the time, and they sleep together in light camping bags in the room with the biggest open wall. Sometimes Poe drags his makeshift bed to the edge of the curtains and falls asleep hoping for a storm, so he can wake in the night with cool rain on his face.

///

He is lying on his back, sweat sticking him to the floor, staring at the ceiling. His hair is soaked, and even his breathing feels wet. Used to life on Yavin IV or not, it's too hot to move. Too hot to think. Too hot for anything.

Kes is off at one of the far corners of the settlement, helping repair a neighbor's damaged roof, but suddenly his mother's face is hovering over his and she is smiling his favorite smile, with far too many teeth and her crinkling eyes all swallowed up by its wideness. Shara grabs Poe's hand and then they're running—slowly, so Poe's short legs can keep up—and laughing the whole way, through the back door and around to the front of the house, rolling and sprawling out in the grass under the spreading branches of the blue-green tree Shara Bey loves so much.

"Okay, Poe," she says once they've caught their breath and stood back up, "stand just there," and she guides him with one hand on his shoulder. He watches carefully, pushing curls from his forehead and memorizing her every move, every line of her face. Shara breathes in slowly through her nose and follows the motion with her hands, drawing them up to her chest. She exhales through pursed lips and lets her hands fall back to her sides.

A breeze tugs at the hem of Poe's shirt and the beginnings of matching smiles tug at mother and son's lips, neither of them willing to break the silence yet. She draws her arms up, first to the right and then left, swaying languidly back and forth until her body sings with the motion; the wind rises and pulls playfully at the ends of her hair. With a twist of her fingers Poe is surrounded by swirling tendrils of cool air and he lets out a shriek of laughter, stomping his feet and whooping. He shivers as a gust flies straight up his spine and leaves his shirt billowing. Shara repeats the gesture and grins wide.

Bottom lip between her teeth, Shara Bey narrows her eyes and pushes both arms out in front of her, palms out, hands open. She twists her wrists slightly, palms skyward, and Poe's feet lift off the ground; he hovers a few inches above the grass, wriggling in the tunnel of air rushing past his ears until he begins to turn, caught in a rotation powered by his excitedly flailing arms. Shara holds him up for as long as she can, but after a few minutes he comes back to earth.

Poe tumbles into his mother's arm. "Mama, is that like flying?"

Shara kisses his forehead. "It's exactly like flying."

///

Those moments, floating weightless and watching himself hover over the ground with the wind in his ears, are exactly what Poe thinks of when he breaks atmosphere for the first time. He and his mother are strapped into the same seat of the A-Wing Interceptor she managed to keep when she left the Rebel Alliance, her hands over his on the controls. The helmet dwarfs him, and the visor is slightly cracked, but her voice hisses and fizzles right in his ear, tinny and echoing since she's there at his back.

Below them, Yavin IV is small, round, and very green; Poe knows that it's only a moon, but it's also the world, it's _his_ world, and here in the air it's everything.

///

The _Viajeros_ return to the settlement for Shara Bey's funeral.

Mama Frey sings a mourning song, and across the fire her now-blind eyes find Poe's unerringly. He finds no comfort in her creased brown face, or in his father's calloused hands.

Later, high off the ground and safe in the branches of the tall blue-green tree that had been a gift from Luke Skywalker, Poe remembers the feeling of the world below his feet continuing to spin even without him on it. He twists his fingers and pushes outward with open hands, trying to coax the wind to rise, to hold on to this last piece of his mother.

The air hangs still.

///

Poe knows he's dreaming as he presses his hand against the smooth, warm bark—silver-grey shot through with green. The wind stirs the myriad blue-green leaves blocking out the rest of the world around him and he knows… He _knows_ —

He hasn't touched this tree hasn't seen it since he left Yavin IV, years ago now. Before Mirrin Prime and Lonno Deso, before the _Yissira Zyde_ and Muran—gods, _Muran_ —before the Resistance and Leia Organa and the _Hevurion Grace_ , before _everything_. This tree, one of the last living pieces of Shara Bey in the galaxy, given to her by _Luke Skywalker_.

Luke Skywalker.

Why did that seem to matter so much all the sudden?

Poe presses his fingers harder into the bark, feeling its pulse, so like his own. He'd been looking for Luke Skywalker, trying to find…something. Something he'd gone to Lor San Tekka to find… A map?

He knows it was a map. He doesn't want to know it was a map. Lor San Tekka is dead. Where is the map? Tuanul has been razed. Where is the map? His X-Wing is gone—not _his_ , unmarked, but still gone—and so is BB-8. Where is—

The tree is screaming, its trunk splitting from the roots up to the sky. The leaves begin to smoke. The air hangs still. Poe cannot pull his hand from the tree, it is burning, the tree is screaming, and—

Poe is screaming. And then, suddenly, he isn't. If it hadn't been hours—of interrogation, of torture, of Kylo Ren and his vicious, anonymous mask—if Poe didn't know that now he is going to die, he would have something clever to say.

///

Pulled into an alcove, Poe can't help feeling a little disappointed and indignant that his life and death will amount to a zero sum. In his younger, more hell-raising and rabble-rousing days, he'd assumed that his death would be significantly more ignominious and at least semi-public—even his father had; joining the Resistance had only strengthened the conviction. Here, in a corner about to be shot anonymously by a stormtrooper and probably spaced, it all just feels wrong.

The stormtrooper removes his helmet and Poe's fragmenting mind jumps immediately to the memory of Mama Frey and her night-sky skin, and then to the freedom of leaving gravity, artificial or otherwise, behind. Freedom.

But the stormtrooper is just looking for a pilot, he's not Resistance, and Poe briefly entertains the thought that this is just another trick, tugging at the strings of his mind. He can't feel the raw flames of Ren's manipulations, though. This stormtrooper is a friend, even if only for now, and Poe can fly anything.

He allows hope to bloom in his chest.

"We're going to do this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I went from having nothing to do but write all the time to having a forty hour work week in the span of three days; I'm still trying to carve out writing time in all of that, but this took far longer than I wanted it to because all I did this week was work and sleep.
> 
> It's a lot heavier in random headcanon than the other chapters, but I just wanted to write about Poe having a nice, mostly happy childhood because these babs suffer so much. (And because I needed a way to plant ideas and values he'll come back to later, but who really cares about intent, right?) Anyway, now the three major players are all where they need to be and we're just going to keep riding on pretending I know what I'm doing.
> 
> Title from AURORA's _Conqueror_ ; chapter title from Florence + the Machine's _Between Two Lungs_.
> 
> No solid update schedule; come find me on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)!


	4. One burn, one red, one grin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This girl is stars and water and earth; in the face of fire and death and endless uncharted space, he will keep running with her.

If he closes his eyes for just a moment, Poe can almost believe he's back in training. Leaving the docking cables attached? Rookie mistake. The sense of someone at his back—it's been so long since he's had a copilot besides BB-8 that he's almost choked by the wash of mixed emotions it brings up.

But only if that wouldn't maybe probably definitely absolutely get them killed. Better to blame it all on the torture, lock it away in the back of his mind, and address the issues at hand. Speaking of…

He centers himself, tries to ignore the trickle of sweat running down the back of his neck and steady the unfamiliar pitch and yaw of the rocketing TIE fighter while he gives directions on the firing system to the stormtrooper. It hardly seems coherent, and he hopes it's at least _correct_.

It must be, because even as he's finally getting the cables unhooked, thing begin to explode around them. Good, that's good—chaos can only help them at this point.

A moment later, Poe curses himself and wishes there was some way to take back his thoughts, because the chaos that comes upon them as he flies straight into a swarm of TIE fighters and seekers is disorienting and more than a little distracting in his addled state. The frenzy of lights and sounds, laser blasts and explosions is beginning to well up behind his eyes, a pounding migraine centered on the bridge of his nose unlike anything he's ever felt. Well, almost.

Just another thing to file away to think about or not think about at his leisure later. Which probably isn't coming if he doesn't _focus_.

The cannons. He pulls the ship around, dodging and weaving through the horde of incoming ships and shouting out orders to the stormtrooper. It is, technically, true that they can't get very far without disabling at least some of the Star Destroyer's weapons, but the tactical reasoning doesn't stretch to explain the savage satisfaction swelling in Poe's chest as they tear apart enemy ships and systems. He lines up the shot.

The stormtrooper takes it, and suddenly they're wreathed in flames; it won't buy as much time as he wants, but Poe has learned to work within the confines of reality when it conflicts with the ideal. For the moment, he's too caught up in his copilot's exhilarated whooping to consider options he doesn't have. He does spare a moment to think outside himself, though, even if it only extends the scant distance to the man behind him.

"Hey, what's your name?"

"FN-2187!"

"FN—What?!" In a jolting moment, Poe understands a great deal about the man behind him, and the organization he's fighting.

"That's the only name they ever gave me." It's matter-of-fact rather than sad, but Poe wonders at the sound of the words in the other man's voice regardless. He wishes he could see his face, but that's another thing for later—his addled mind; the blood drying in his hairline; the migraine; the stormtrooper's wide face and straight, straight teeth.

"Yeah, well, I ain't usin' it! FN, huh? Finn, I'm gonna call you Finn—that all right?"

"Finn. Yeah, Finn, I like that!" Even without seeing him, Poe can hear his smile, and he wishes he had a moment to imagine it, really imagine the grin spreading across Finn's warm brown face.

Instead, he focuses on Finn's delight and excitement and adds it into the engine of his rage, one more thing to push him forward against the First Order. "I'm Poe. Poe Dameron!"

"Good to meet you, Poe!"

"Good to meet you, too, Finn!"

They work seamlessly together, feeding off each other's ruthless adrenaline in a rhythm of offense and evasive action that Poe would be hard-pressed to match with either of his squadrons—until Finn notices their trajectory. The argument consumes more of his attention than he should allow it, but returning to Jakku and retrieving BB-8 is the only thing that matters, and friend or not, defecting stormtrooper or not, this is the mission and Finn doesn't get a say in it. Poe ignores the twinge of guilt and resolves to apologize for stripping that choice away, make it up to him if he can—later.

The abrupt shock of impact and wailing alarms of catastrophic failure swallow all of Poe's focus, but as they spiral faster and faster toward the planet's surface, he can't help but wonder if he's lost his chance for _later_.

///

FN-2187—no, _Finn_ , he's _Finn_ now and he clenches his teeth around the word and clings to it as surely as his fist is wrapped up in Poe Dameron's leather jacket.

Finn has never truly been without water. Of course the Order would withhold rations and water as individual punishment or group punishment or because one of the commanding officers was feeling capricious, but the truth of the matter was that soldiers couldn't operate at optimal capacity if they were starving or dehydrated, and General Hux in particular detested having to replace and retrain recruits.

There had also been environment training, guaranteeing a trooper's ability to endure and survive in any locale, hostile or otherwise—even deserts like this endless wasteland, Finn thinks with a scowl—but the training always came with a definite end, at which point squadrons were slowly worked back to standard rations. If they did well enough, when they had returned to regular conditions without any adverse effects of reintroducing food and water, a squadron could even be rewarded with extra portions.

His squadron had done just that, everyone except Slip, and in the end that hadn't mattered. Finn—FN-2187? The change is hard enough to wrap his mind around on its own, and now trying to puzzle out whether he is a different person, if he _had been_ a different person, and where should he draw the line? Crashing on Jakku, being given a name, breaking Poe out, _deciding_ to break Poe out? It only intensifies his headache— _He_ had shared his extra portions with Slip.

The heat makes his thoughts slippery and hard to catch hold of, while his mind grinds and moves so slowly.

Water. He was thinking of water.

He is always and never thinking of water, he realizes; it's a part of him. Right now his skin is cracked and rough and his eyes itch despite his permanent squint. His tongue is coated with dust, and every time he tries to swallow he gags on the grit caught in his throat. He nose feels close to bleeding from all the sand he's inhaled. Nothing can possibly live here.

It can, though—he's seen the village. Seen it burn. He discarded his armor an age ago, but still it chafes at him.

As he crests the rise of a dune, Finn sees what can only be a trading outpost of some kind, a ramshackle collection of shacks and tents bustling with activity. _Or a mirage_ , a voice whispers in the back of his mind; in his haze, he can't quite tell whether it's the cool voice of the captain calling him a fool, or Poe's rough whisper urging caution. No matter which, he has only one course of action.

Shrugging into the jacket—the only thing he has of Poe Dameron, the only thing he has—Finn lowers himself to the sand. Each grain is coarse and irritating under his palms, and he's going to regret this later when trying to shake sand out of his clothes. But he flexes his fingers and reaches out; whether the settlement is a mirage or not, the water he senses is real, and it means his survival.

Finn begins the measured slide down the dune.

///

Foolish. She's so foolish, so _stupid_. Rejecting sixty portions, enough to feed her for—for more time than she can really fathom. After so long scavenging, she doesn't know how to look any further ahead than the next day, the next hour. And she'd spat in the face of that security for what? A BB-unit astromech droid with too much sand in its circuits to communicate clearly, something that will only make her a target for every other scavenger this side of Kelvin Ridge.

Rey shakes her head; sixty portions would only kill her. Even if she could have gotten it back to the AT-AT, someone would have murdered her in her bed before the next sunrise—if she was lucky. If she wasn't, well… She shudders, thinking of Unkar Plutt and his greasy smile. The thought of being beholden to him makes her want to tear open the earth and force it to swallow her whole.

Before she can follow the thread of her thoughts—rage and indignation that _she_ should be the one swallowed up rather than Plutt—she is jerked to a halt by a rough hand on her arm. Rey turns in time to see a sack thrown over BB-8, and then she's yanked back, pulled into a vice grip from behind, both arms pinned to her sides. She stomps down hard on her attacker's foot and sinks her teeth into the meaty exposed flesh of his wrist. No time to spit the dusty, sour taste from her mouth, she swings her staff free and stabs out with as much force as she can manage, catching the second thug in the chest.

She pulls back in time to knock aside a blow from the first, using her momentum to batter him with a dizzying barrage of hits to the sides and stomach, spinning to deliver a carefully aimed kick to his head and send him sprawling. Her body itches to call up the sands and push these two aside, but life will be impossible enough after this; instead she brings her staff around like a bat. The end cracks hard into the thug's skull in time with her feral snarl.

Rey brushes dust from her tunic, cataloging bruises on her upper arms, a dull ache in one shoulder and a sharp pain in her ribs; around her, Niima Outpost moves as though nothing out of the ordinary has occurred. It hasn't, really, she realizes as she kneels down to drag the sack from a furiously beeping BB-8.

Looking into its face, she knows she never could have traded it away. It reminds her of nothing so much as a small animal, hissing and spitting its tonal fury, hackles raised. Somehow, unwelcome tagalong though it is, it's very dear, too. She sees the moment something catches its eye, and as it begins to speak the whistles and whirs are too fast and chaotic to understand, but she follows its eye-line. Then she realizes what the droid is saying.

"Who? Him?"

The man meets her eye and freezes, but it doesn't take long for him to start running.

Rey gives chase.

///

The water is disgusting—brown and cloudy and coated with a thin layer of slime no doubt contributed by the massive beast of burden currently eyeing him suspiciously. Finn gags, spits; it's easily the most repulsive thing he's ever tasted, and the slickness of it caught in his throat is enough to make him want to lose whatever might be left in his stomach.

He dips his hands back in the trough and keeps drinking.

By the time the creature has shouldered him away from its watering hole, he almost feels human again. As human as he's ever felt. That clarity is disturbing and opens up his thoughts to a host of questions he's never had to consider the answers to—chiefly: _What now?_

He's alone on a planet where water is fatally scarce with no plan and no resources, and Poe Dameron is dead.

He's almost grateful for the distraction of the commotion in the marketplace, though seeing the source leaves him more conflicted than before; should he help? The decision is quickly taken from him as the girl handily outdoes her attackers and kneels to retrieve whatever it is is they were trying to take from her.

The glare of sun on metal blinds him, but as he blinks the blue-green spots from his eyes the image resolves itself into…a droid. A BB-unit, orange and white. _One of a kind_ , that voice whispers to him, and this time he knows it's Poe, because that droid is carrying a map to Luke Skywalker from the Resistance. That droid is staring at him, coming toward him, and so is the girl, and she's snarling and most definitely threatening.

He can't move fast enough, not in unfamiliar territory crowded with creatures of every shape and size, not weighed down by grief and confusion and dehydration. When the blow comes, he's expecting it, but he can't brace himself for the thunderclap of pain and color behind his eyes; it takes him several seconds to register the pain of his spine on the strangely unyielding ground, and bite down on the instinct to draw water up around him and lash out—useless here on Jakku and otherwise inadvisable at his current disadvantage.

The droid butts up against his thigh and stabs; the resulting arc of electricity does nothing to help his focus or quell the pain in his head, and the girl's brusque interrogation is hard to understand in the wake of the second shock. Poe's jacket seems too tight, pulling at his shoulders like a weight when the pieces finally fall into place and he chokes out, "Poe didn't make it."

Finn can't stand the sight of the little thing's desperate sadness, so he turns to the girl instead. She's not growling at him any more, and the look in her eyes reminds him of the vast, sparkling expanse of space he could see from the port observation deck on _Finalizer_.

"So you're with the Resistance?" she asks, all those stars held in her teeth, too.

He makes a quick decision, tugged by the great and terrible weight of humanity settling on his shoulders as she stares at him. "Obviously. Yes, I am. I am with the Resistance, yeah."

In the moment, Finn can't be sure whether the stormtroopers shooting at them lends credence to his story or not, but the feeling of guilt twisting in his gut is something he has learned to identify as wholly his own, neither soldier nor human. This time, there is no choice but to help the girl.

When he takes her hand, she feels like water under his fingers, cool and quicksilver in this desiccated junkyard. She pulls a pyramid of sand around them to protect them from one of the airstrikes and returns it to the ground just as quickly, rolling over to him.

"Are you okay?" he asks; they can't afford the way that question makes her freeze, but she is staring at him with all of those stars again, so it must have been right to ask. She reaches out for his hand this time, no argument or hesitation.

That water-softness is still between them, and even though they are running for their lives, Finn feels like he's been submerged and come up blinking and fresh. This girl is stars and water and earth; in the face of fire and death and endless uncharted space, he will keep running with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot tell you how happy I am to have finally finished another chapter; it turns out two thirty-five/forty hour work weeks in a row are about all my body can take, so it's taken me forever to piece this one together.
> 
> I'm working on another piece, too, probably not chaptered but part of a series, sort of a modern fantasy au that will mostly serve as a vehicle for me to write ridiculous fluff (which is what this was supposed to be, too, and suddenly, we're nearly ten thousand words in and they've only just left Jakku). I think this one will end up being part of a series, too, but we all know I don't know what I'm doing so just keep an eye out for changes if you're interested.
> 
> Title from AURORA's _Conqueror_ ; chapter title from Ellie Goulding's _Tessellate_.
> 
> No regular update schedule; come find me on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)!


	5. Things we lost to the flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Han wonders if he will always be carrying desert children to their greater destinies.

The _Millennium Falcon_ is strangely quiet; after the frantic, desperate chaos of their escape, Finn can't help expecting shrieking alarms and blaster fire. The lazy rush of hyperspace is more soothing than anything, and the occasional rattle of stowed cargo or creaking hull panels makes the whole thing…almost familiar. Lived in.

Chewbacca is sleeping off some of his injury in the med bay; Rey is in the cockpit with Han Solo, pestering him with question while he does his best to ignore her. He'd retreated there after telling them the truth of his legendary exploits with Luke Skywalker, and from the sound of it, Rey hasn't stopped talking since. Not that he can blame her—he can't imagine she got a lot of opportunities to talk to anyone, all alone of Jakku. At least, she seemed alone. She seems lonely.

 _I've never been alone_ , Finn realizes. Now, maybe, in the rec area of the _Falcon_ , but there are people practically an arm's reach away; he can hear the echoes of their voices down the corridor. Even on Jakku, he didn't think he'd really been alone. The whole time, he hadn't been entirely sure his squadron wasn't right there behind him, relying on him to get them all through the ordeal alive. Phasma had been there with him, reminding him of every mistake and emphasizing all of his failures. Making it clear that behind him was safety and security, and all that awaited him was a traitor's death.

Poe had been there, too, just out of reach; wearing his jacket felt like safety, felt like water.

He's not sure when he started shaking, but all the sudden Finn can feel the tight grasp of the rathtar's flailing arm around his ankle and the metal floor grates of the _Falcon_ slipping out of his grasp. Nausea rises in his gut and his nose is full of the stink of Tuanul burning. He doesn't _want_ to be alone. Rey's voice is no longer drifting down the corridor to him.

Finn gets to his feet and makes his way to the cockpit.

///

The cockpit of the _Millennium Falcon_ is too small. It's the same size as the interior of her AT-AT. The universe is too large, endless space and stars spread out like the empty deserts of Jakku. Rey's skin is too small. The whole world is too much. 

She's never seen hyperspace before. Never seen a rathtar. Never met a legendary smuggler after stealing his ship. Never been asked if she was alright. Never reached so deeply into herself out of fear and desperation that she moved metal.

Curled into a ball in the copilot's chair, Rey presses her hand to the jagged scar on her left side. _Not true_ , says a small voice inside her, and she feels the screaming rending of metal as she falls—

Finn's hand being ripped from hers had felt like that; she'd never liked the feel of water under her skin, but when he touched her, Finn felt soft and cool and earthy.

Shorting out the transport's fuses had seemed ingenious, until the rathtars came shrieking toward them, ripping Finn from her. Until she'd slammed her hand down on the door controls in an attempt to save him and nothing happened. Rey didn't think she'd ever run faster, giving chase down the corridor; she planted her feet when they came into view, judging distance and the build of the ship, and then she reached deep inside herself and _pulled_ , trying to find whatever it was that saved her years ago. She didn't hope; she didn't pray; she didn't even _ask_ for anything to save Finn—there was no point putting her faith in anything else when she was standing right there.

So she reached out her arms, clenched her fists, and pulled for all she was worth. The door came crashing down, severing the creature's tentacle and dropping Finn _hard_. Rey rushed to him, pulling him upright and down the corridor.

"It had me! But the door—!"

"That was lucky!"

Lucky indeed, since Rey had put his life in the hands of an untested power with an unpredictable outcome.

Everything was just…too much. Too much. Almost being robbed of BB-8, stealing Unkar Plutt's prize (the _Millennium Falcon_!) and running for her life through the ships' graveyard, rathtars, Han Solo, the Force, this power growing heavy at the base of her throat. Rey taps out a rhythm against her knees with thumb and forefinger, ignoring the sidelong glance Han gives her. The comfort of Jakku had been solitude and loneliness to retreat into at any moment, and now it is gone.

Her heart leaps into her throat when Finn approaches from behind, but she covers it by uncurling, putting her feet on the floor and reaching for the control panel.

"This is our stop," Han says, deftly flicking switches, and the _Falcon_ lurches out of hyperspace with a sigh, pulling them down through a cloudy atmosphere and into…

Into…

Rey's throat folds in on itself, and the seething power in her chest settles down in neat, comforted coils. Surely her mouth never felt so dry in the deserts of Jakku. From her scouring station in the marketplace, she'd heard travelers and old scavengers tell stories about rivers and oceans, trees and forests and flowers, but…

"I didn't know there was this much green in the whole galaxy…"

///

Finn's not sure whether Rey meant to speak out loud, or if she even knows she did, but one look at her misty eyes and he quickly looks away, sidling slightly closer to Han to allow her some semblance of space.

///

Liars are easy to read; he's not always sure what in particular a lie is about or why it's being told, but Han always knows when he's being lied to. He's had the kid pegged from the first moment, but sometimes it's best to just leave things undisturbed. Old smugglers get that way by shooting first and asking questions later, but old generals—and he is that, much as he hates to admit it—wait for all the pieces to lay themselves out.

The other one, the girl, he can't pin down. She's painfully earnest, that's for sure, stronger than tempered durasteel and tired in her bones. Her breath catches in her throat when she first sees Takodana, and for a moment Han sees blue eyes and sandy hair and the wide-eyed wonder of someone long gone.

Han wonders if he will always be carrying desert children to their greater destinies.

///

The earth of Takodana is springy and rich with water. It presses against Rey's consciousness like a desert cat looking for attention, and she gives a few experimental pushes and tugs to the ground around their landing site, creating pillars and plateaus before letting them melt back into level earth. Manipulating Takodana's soil leaves her feeling nourished and soft, and she digs her fingers into the rich, dark earth in thanks for its eager cooperation.

Han gives Finn a blaster rifle, a warning, and a sturdy canteen of water that clips to his belt before following Rey down the landing ramp. He hands her a pistol that used to live under the _Falcon_ 's flight control panel in case of emergency.

"I've been thinking," he says slowly, "about bringing on some new crew, Rey. A second mate, someone to help out—someone who can keep up with Chewie and me, appreciates the _Falcon_."

"Are you offering me a job?" There's an edge of disbelief to her voice that makes him want to carry her every lightyear of the journey to the Resistance, damn the consequences.

"I wouldn't be nice to you. It doesn't pay much."

"You're offering me a job." Rey says _job_ like it means _home_ , which Han supposes is true for someone who makes her living picking clean the bones of the desert. He hears Luke calling out for his aunt and uncle in his sleep.

"I'm thinking about it." Rey opens her mouth. Closes it again. "Well?"

"If you were I'd be flattered, but I have to get home." Her hands are coated with wet black earth, but her tongue is thick with sand.

///

Maz Kanata's castle is like nothing Finn has ever seen. Not that he's seen all that much, but it's overwhelming in the sheer variety of people and sounds and colors and smells—a cacophony of brand new and almost familiar and unpleasant but delightful out of sheer novelty. He finds himself constantly distracted by the clatter of it until Maz and Han's conversation resolves itself with perfect clarity, and he finds himself right in the thick of it.

In a moment, she's on the table in front of him, eyes huge behind her bizarre spectacles. Something boils inside Finn, a lifetime of programming rankling under her blindly knowing judgment.

"You don't know a thing about me. Where I'm from, what I've seen. You don't know the First Order like I do. We all need to run."

///

" _Come with me._ "

Finn has never been alone before, has never felt more empty than watching Rey turn her back to him and walk away.

///

" _Don't go._ "

The coiled beast in Rey's chest breaks free and rages, trampling every shred of proof that she is anything but a house built for leaving. Something inside her cries out, and she follows the screaming down the stairs.

///

A thousand years is enough time to learn a few things—particularly about balance. When Maz pulls a thread, somewhere another moves. Nothing is ever really new, and it cannot truly be destroyed. Balance she understands, along with all the subtlety of the Force and its ways.

Han Solo's arrival in her domain with two mysteries and a map to Luke Skywalker in tow has all the subtlety of a forest fire.

She follows the girl.

///

Rey is immediately conscious of the elemental nature of this—vision? Earth, fire, water, air; solid ground, burning temples, pounding rain, harsh winds shifting the sand. Blinding light.

Paralyzing terror.

Her hands are beating violently against her legs as she comes to on the floor of the dusty corridor, scurrying backward to press her back against the wall. Her throat is full of fire, and she keeps her mouth shut tight for fear of burning the castle down.

Maz Kanata approaches slowly, a cool breeze in the close air of the corridor.

"What was that? I shouldn't have gone in there."

"That lightsaber was Luke's, and his father's before him—and now, it calls to you!" All the subtlety of the stars, millennia of careful hints and gentle guidance come crashing down in a spectacular fashion. Maz cannot seem to catch her breath, and the air tastes of sand and fire.

Rey runs.

///

What is there to be said when the world ends?

There is a profound silence that comes before the screams. In the absence of five planets—the entire buzzing Hosnian system, home to billions of lives—the grasping silence of a missing star system pulling at the Force.

Fire streaks through the sky; Maz Kanata's castle has never been empty before, but everyone streams out into the courtyard to watch the despair and destruction with horrified fascination.

///

Rey is still running when the stormtroopers land. She turns to BB-8, trailing behind her with a series of worried beeps; the castle is under attack, laser blasts and debris flying everywhere just beyond the tree line—she struggles to separate the screams of the people from the shrieking TIE fighters swooping overhead. Her friends are back there.

Well, the others, anyway. Finn who left. Han and Chewbacca, who were going to place them on a ship and fly away to their next adventure. BB-8 warbles plaintively at her feet; if she's the only one here to keep it safe, she'll buy every second she can.

"You have to keep going. Stay out of sight—I'll try to fight them off." The little droid tells her that they will meet again, and Rey bites down on her emotions, locks them tightly away. "I hope so, too."

BB-8 rolls off at a careful, alert speed, and Rey takes cover behind a massive mossy tree—far larger, she realizes absently, than she thought trees could get.

Something dark is coming.

///

Finn coughs as he surfaces into the haze of dust and smoke; the true enormity what the First Order has done has yet to hit him, but he couldn't leave these people—his friends?—to face such power alone. His blood sings with desperation, some bone-deep recognition of the unfathomable loss the universe just experienced.

Maz Kanata places the lightsaber in his hands and the world goes still for a moment. The lighted blade feels like water in his hands, and he pulls the top from the canteen Han gave him as he swings, surprising first one trooper, then another.

A broad slash across the torso with the lightsaber incapacitates the first, and Finn uses a sinuous twist of his wrist to form the water into a thin whip, lashing out at the second stormtrooper's ankles and knocking them to the ground.

"Traitor!" The cry echoes behind him, and the pit in Finn's stomach yawns open wide as he turns; he can't say _how_ he knows, but he's sure, absolutely certain that this is Nines. He sees their sharp vulpine face in his memories, deep in shadow and lit with bouncing sparks; the contempt in their eyes as they burned Slip's arm with a touch; the reckless glee of Tuanul burning. Their bright white teeth when they smile, and their snorting, nose-wrinkling laugh.

FN-2199 has never shown the same potential for generating lightning that some firebenders in the ranks exhibit, but when equipped with an electrically charged riot baton, 2199 can boost the power output provided by the weapon.

Sparks fly when lightsaber and baton meet, less a challenge of skill and more a test of strength and will as the hilts of the weapons catch and the two find themselves deadlocked. Finn grits his teeth, staring into Nines' visor as he pushes forward; he pulls the water close to him, wrapping his hands in a cool shield to defend against the heat of Nines' weapon. A bead of sweat runs down his face.

Sensing an advantage, FN-2199 steps back, pulling the riot baton free and throwing the traitor FN-2187 off-balance. In the split-second before he can regain his footing, Nines catches a spark from the baton and focuses until it blooms into a crackling ball of energy that they release straight into Eight-Seven's chest. He falls to the ground gasping, the lightsaber flung from his grasp and his orb of water splattering into the earth.

FN-2199 steps forward and raises their weapon.

///

A well opens up in Rey's chest as she scrambles behind another tree, something fathomless and ancient, burning like wildfire in the pit of her chest and reaching out flaming tendrils to her hands, her feet, her head. She sees, in her mind's eye, five points of violent brilliant light against a clear blue sky, and a roaring emptiness takes her over.

The forest reaches out to fill it, drawing up water from the deepest roots and cocooning her in gentle breezes. The earth beneath her feet rumbles soothingly.

Fire cracks to life behind her.

///

Nines flies backwards, caught in the chest by a bolt of red energy, and lands with a sickening crunch against a nearby chunk of debris.

Finn takes the hand Han offers him and staggers upright, retrieving the lightsaber and standing back-to-back with Han and Chewie, preparing what can only be their last stand. He feels empty and helpless, dying without any water at his command.

The enemy troops approach and Finn's heart swells with disgust as they wrench Luke Skywalker's lightsaber from his hands, forcing all of their hands above their heads. Han's fingers twitch like he's itching to throw some punches, and the grim expression in Chewbacca's eyes says he'd follow his friend right down to the ground.

There's a roaring in Finn's ears growing louder and louder, and he's never felt helpless rage like this but—

The sound crests the hills and resolves itself into squadrons of ships: a mismatched collection of old Rebel Alliance vessels and unmarked junkers, every one a little different, a dozen designs Finn has never seen before. Immediately they open fire on the TIE fighters and ground troops, splitting off in different directions to cut off as many escaping ships as they can. The First Order came to Takodana expecting a ground assault, and they aren't prepared for the sudden influx of air support.

One ship in particular catches Finn's eye: an X-Wing of some kind that swoops in dangerously low and twists, shooting the troops surrounding him before pulling up and looping around for another run. Finn can't help the joyous whoop that escapes him, bubbling up with adrenaline and relief.

"That's one hell of a pilot!"

Finn picks up the fallen lightsaber and leaps back into the fray.

///

Rey runs, frantically trying to adjust to the way the slippery-soft soil shifts under her feet, putting her hands out to steady herself against the sides of the gully. She can't stop moving. She throws up a wall of earth behind her, trying to block the passage, but the dark creature blasts through it in a roar of fire, still advancing.

The lightsaber in its hand hisses and cracks with barely contained energy. Its footsteps are heavy but fleet, and as Rey crests a hill she turns to face it with a broad tree at her back. Sparks from the lightsaber lick at the ground, and she can feel each flinch of the earth.

She lifts her blaster, squeezes the trigger as many times as she can, but it catches each pulse of energy until it holds a ball of flames in its hand; it raises the lightsaber and holds the energy close to the blade. There's a shriek as the two merge and the red lightsaber flares, spitting and shivering.

Rey plants her feet as it begins to approach, flinging stones and pieces of earth straight at it, each one burned through and pushed aside almost casually by the flaming blade. The black figure lifts a hand and the stones between them fall from the air; Rey freezes, breath caught in her throat, every muscle straining against whatever this hold is.

"The girl I've heard so much about."

The voice, half-swallowed by the mask, hisses out, pressing in against her eardrums until her head feels about to burst. She's choked with tears, wild with fear and refusing to cry.

"The droid," it says, and the red blade swings up, level with her jaw and casting a vicious glare into her eyes—so close to her throat, all of that raw energy and flame so close to her, so close to the end of it all.

The blade snaps off, and a black-gloved hand comes up to her face. That pressure again, in her ears and pressing against her temples, something reaching in and rooting around.

"The map. You've seen it."

The tears come now as it presses harder into her mind until—

An explosion past the tree line. The hand drops, the figure turns. Shouts and blaster fire. Footsteps and muffled voices.

"Forget the droid. We have what we need."

The world goes black.

///

After the arrival of the Resistance ships, it's not hard to mop up a good number of the remaining stormtroopers; they retreat to the tree line, to their ships, and Han lowers his blaster.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches movement in a still clearing—one of the last First Order shuttles to begin taking off. A bulky, black-robed figure strides up the walkway carrying a limp form in dust-colored rags. There's an eerie calm to the figure, and an aura of power and fear that radiates from it even at this distance. The shuttle takes off.

Distantly, Han is aware of Finn screaming, trying to reach the shuttle, but everything seems far away.

He feels like he's been run through. Flames lick at every inch of him, as though everything within him hadn't turned to ash years ago.

///

Rey is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this took me a long time.  
> Right as I got into the swing of my work schedule and its many demands, I lost someone I loved very much, and after that I just couldn't write. As hard as I tried, nothing would come and I struggled a lot with just trying to stay on my feet.
> 
> I'm back now, and I'm working on a whole bunch of things, so thank you to those of you who've stuck around even though I didn't update for four months. This is officially the longest thing I've ever written, and I'm not giving up on it.
> 
> I've updated the tags on this a little bit because this particular piece is turning out differently than I expected, but it's now going to be part of a series, and it WILL eventually be Rey/Finn/Poe and lots of adventures with the Force and things. This fic itself will probably just cover the breadth of the film.
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Title from AURORA's _Conqueror_ ; chapter title from Bastille's _Things We Lost In the Fire_.


	6. There's no seduction, only destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels it: something that awakened when her mind brushed Ren's, and despite the revulsion of that moment, as she probes its edges Rey finds only herself there—a green place, hidden away but awake. There is a green and growing thing in her desert chest, and if that is possible than this moment holds an infinity, if only she can focus.

Rey has never seen so much gleaming metal, so much clear white light, her reflection surrounding her on all sides as she struggles against her restraints. And then, at the edge of her awareness—sight or consciousness, she can't tell which in the blur of it all—there is the hulking shadow of Kylo Ren, looming closer.

"Where am I?"

"You're my guest." His voice sounds somehow genuine, and the unsettling earnestness of it curls into her chest, sets her to shivering. He believes what he says, and she sets her teeth at the mention of her friends, straightens her shoulders against the rig they strapped her into.

When he removes his mask, the bare emotion of his face is overwhelming—nearly overcoming the shock of his being human after all.

"You know I can take whatever I want."

He reaches for her, and revulsion wells in Rey's chest. The touch cascades outward like a shock, down her neck and up his arm, something echoing between the two of them, lingering in the air. And then she's pushing back against the heavy press of him in her mind, the feeling of the fire he uses to fuel his saber _inside_ her.

"At night, desperate to sleep… You imagine an ocean. I see it—I see the island…"

It's there behind her eyelids, green and moss-covered and crumbling into the sea beneath. The red-black wrongness of Ren's presence in that place lifts her up and sets her back on her feet, muscles tense and waiting.

Her body coils tighter as he reaches deeper, sifting through feelings he can't possibly understand: Han, Finn, the Falcon, Jakku, her island…

Rey looks into his eyes. She imagines solid earth under her feet, somewhere far below all this soulless metal, and pushes back against it.

"You— You're afraid. Afraid that you'll never be as strong as _Darth Vader_."

///

D'Qar is green even from a distance, and the gaping wound of Finn's chest beats the memory of Rey's hoarse whisper: "I didn't know there was this much green in the whole galaxy." The empty space wraps itself around the thought of her and squeezes.

Finn can feel the abundance of water in the atmosphere as he steps off the ship; he spreads his arms wide before bringing his hands close together, an orb of clear water between his palms. It feels like it would be easy to spread it over the people bickering behind him, ease their tension, but he's not sure it works that way. Besides, it's clear that Solo and the woman—he heard the crew refer to her as "General," which tightens his spine regardless of the kind lines of her face—and it's not his place to interfere or even his business at all. In that way, this larger world isn't so different from being a stormtrooper: Finn keeps his head down and stays out of it.

BB-8 crashes through his knees, and Finn's not sure if the droid is still his responsibility, now that they're all in the hands of the Resistance, but he thinks he might as well follow. The little droid is beeping wildly, shrieks and wails that Finn can't understand, and it's not until he looks up that his heart stops.

"Poe?"

He's running, and so is Poe, and this can't be real because nothing in his life could be this good, he can't deserve it, but here is Poe with his arms around Finn and for a moment it all disappears, narrowed down to this: the first safe place. "Poe Dameron, you're alive."

///

Still so much gleaming metal, and Rey swears her many reflections are closing in on her as she fights against the shivering, trying to ignore the sweat pouring from her brow. Breathing through clenched teeth, she counts her heartbeats—gives herself to ten, and then opens her eyes with only one goal.

She feels it: something that awakened when her mind brushed Ren's, and despite the revulsion of that moment, as she probes its edges Rey finds only herself there—a green place, hidden away but awake. There is a green and growing thing in her desert chest, and if that is possible than this moment holds an infinity, if only she can focus.

Reaching back, Rey finds the Star Destroyer, feels the long jagged scar from the fall brush against her tunic; she lets herself remember the pain and fear and panic of that day, and the girder appearing beneath her. She remembers flinging out her arms in desperation and _pulling_. Holding that same desperation inside herself, Rey breathes deeply and clenches her fists, pulling her wrists upward as far as the cuffs will allow.

The restraints begin to shake.

Barely a second later, the shake creates a rattle, a little heat as she grits her teeth in concentration, and then with a small protesting shriek all four metal cuffs bend backwards. Rey keeps still as the stormtrooper guarding the door lets out a questioning noise, turning to investigate.

"You will leave this cell with the door open." The words bubble up unbidden, dripping with intent that overrides her bewilderment.

"What did you say?" He's reached her side now, blaster raised, and even a cursory glance will show him everything he needs to use it on her.

Rey reaches for that little seed of something, that curious lightness within her, and draws it up like water trapped beneath the dunes. "You will leave this cell, with the door open." The words are resonant, ringing in every fiber of her being.

The trooper straightens. "I will leave this cell, with the door open."

"And you will drop your weapon."

"And I'll drop my weapon."

She hears the blaster clatter to the polished floor but holds herself in place until she feels the vibrations of the stormtrooper's footsteps dissipate down the hallway. Rey lets go then, disappears into a decade of scavenger's instincts as she scurries out the door, keeping low and scooping up the discarded blaster on the way.

Something dark is coming; she can feel Ren's rage already, and she runs.

///

"FN-2187."

Finn fights the urge to snap to attention at the sound of his designation in that clipped tone; Solo must sense his tension, because after a second's hesitation there's a comforting hand on Finn's elbow, though surely Solo will deny it later. There's something ecstatic, terrified, hysterical welling up in him, standing there holding his former commander at blaster-point. He can't stop it—he sees KD-7072 from all those years ago, her own blood turned against her, the countless trainees and troopers and innocents Phasma must have violated that way, the way she expected him to—

"Not anymore. The name's Finn, and I'm in charge now. I'm in charge now, Phasma. I'm in charge." Finn is suddenly nauseous, can hear the manic edge rising in his voice but can't do anything to contain it and—

Solo's hand moves from Finn's elbow to his shoulder. "Bring it down. Bring it down."

Finn's breath comes in a rush. He relaxes his grip on his stolen blaster—lowers it from Phasma's throat. Holds it at her back instead, gestures down the gleaming hall.

"Follow me."

///

With her back against a wall, blaster held tight, Rey takes in the drop ahead of her, tries to reconfigure her scant knowledge of her location. What she'd assumed to be a Star Destroyer clearly isn't, not with an interior this vast and complex. It _is_ an Imperial descendant, though, and with no hesitation Rey slings the blaster over her shoulders and rolls for the edge as a unit of stormtroopers approaches.

Hanging on by her fingertips, Rey finds herself the most centered she'd been since setting eyes on BB-8 what feels like millennia ago. Here—in the glaring light of a First Order base, escaped and no doubt pursued by Kylo Ren and every living creature in the area, lost and alone and short on both tools and options—here is something familiar.

She spots a likely-looking service hatch a little below her and a few segments across and begins to climb.

///

Back on D'Qar, General Leia Organa gives the order to send the Resistance pilots into the fray. Her blood burns with every ounce of its old fire, but she clenches her fists against it. This isn't the orbit of Scarif, isn't Endor; she cannot wrap her hands around a too-large blaster and charge into battle.

All she can do now is hope.

///

Rey keeps her breathing even as she shimmies through the maintenance tunnels, only allowing herself a deep lungful of air once she's climbed up and out of the last hatch. The relief doesn't last long; clattering footsteps approach from down the corridor, and she readies her blaster, backed into a corner as she is.

When Finn appears a hair's breadth from the blaster's muzzle, she nearly squeezes the trigger, sure that she's hallucinating; immediately she lets go of the weapon, feeling it bounce against her back as she throws her arms around him. 

Over his shoulder, Han smiles gently at her. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

Finn's voice, then, at her ear. "We came back for you."

She releases him, staring into his face as Chewbacca moans something from his place at the corridor's mouth, watching their backs.

"What'd he say?"

Rey feels tears in her eyes for the first time in years but blinks them back, knowing she can't afford to waste the water. Instead, she shrugs and gives Finn a small smile. "That it was your idea."

There's only a second to stare, to take each other's measure before Han is ushering them along, but it's enough for Rey to feel something seismic, something cool and water-slick, settle back into place inside her; she can't help wondering, as they rush outside, whether Finn feels it, too.

///

Instead of a First Order starship or space station, Rey realizes, they're on a _planet_ —solid ground beneath her feet, but it feels wrong: hollow and unsteady. Dying, or deathless, or death itself. This planet is a desert, but nothing like she's ever experienced.

Finn's hand on her arm turns her eyes upward; countless ships swirl and swarm above them, their shapes and colors vague amidst complex maneuvers, laser fire, and explosions. This must be the Resistance. 

"They're in trouble. We can't leave." This is the Han Solo she's heard fewer stories about: smuggler, yes, liar and thief and conman—but here is the Rebellion general who volunteered for suicide runs and sacrificed everything for a cause he claimed meant nothing to him. He turns back to them, and the wind rises as he meets first Finn's eyes, then Rey's. "My friend here has a bag full of explosives. Let's use them."

///

" _Ben_!"

Standing on the freezing catwalk, air currents tugging at his clothes, Han Solo thinks again about desert children and their greater destinies. When he closes his eyes, he sees the blur of stars in hyperspace, and beyond them—woven through them—grains of sand and space dust, dancing and spinning in a playful breeze.

Luke's voice at his shoulder, for the first time in _so long_. _May the Force be with you._

The masked figure turns. Approaches. His voice is distorted beyond recognition, and yet Han hears laughter in it, high-pitched and un-self-conscious, sees candle flames reflected in dark eyes, bouncing between small, soft hands. So much like his mother.

"Take off that mask. You don't need it."

His boy is there, now, so familiar, and Han wonders if this man should be a stranger to him. So much like his mother, all fire and conflict, and Han sees his every mistake reflected back at him in those eyes. His heart hammers fit to burst.

He reaches for the lightsaber, held between them like barrier and peace offering both. The light plays across his son's face, red and blue and clear, blinding white.

Lit with flame, that face sizzles with hatred, and Han feels the crackling blade punch through his chest but can't help nearly disregarding it just to fill his mind with Ben's face.

He hears an animal scream somewhere behind him, but can't place it. He puts out a hand to touch the man before him—his son, _his son_ —but cannot seem to reach.

_May the Force be with you_ , he hears, and maybe the Force should have left him a coward.

///

General Organa rocks on her feet and falls into the nearest chair, hand pressed tightly over the sudden blaze in her chest.

///

Han Solo falls.

///

Finn is pulling at her arm, pulling her outside into the bitter cold, and they're running, they're both running to the tree line, but all Rey can feel is her growing seed beginning to wither with each vibration of her still-heated blaster. The monster follows, she can feel it, and only Finn's hand keeps her from turning to face him here and now.

He catches them ahead, though, rage and fear around him like a stinking cloud. _Weak_ , roars the predator inside her, and she throws herself forward, ready to claw and bite and gouge.

Things blur after that, a wash of pain as her body flies backward. It's too much: the burning of her ribs and spine, Finn and Ren's muffled voices, the star-bright crackle of the lightsabers. Below them, the earth shudders, protesting something Rey can't fathom through the haze of rage. She pushes herself up onto her arms, scrabbling in the snow for her blaster.

Sparks fly through the trees as she wastes time anxiously searching on her hands and knees, until she looks up to see Ren beating ever-forward, relentless, and Finn defending, twisting, stumbling.

Kylo Ren sees the advantage and presses it, pushing Finn back with a last powerful overhead blow; the next strike comes from below, up Finn's torso with a burning slash. Rey stares in horror as her only friend goes limp and collapses into the snow, the lightsaber flying from his hand.

The light within her—that small, green and growing thing—winks out.

Ren extinguishes his lightsaber, one arm outstretched as he reaches for Luke Skywalker's.

///

There's a strange tightness in Poe Dameron's chest as he maneuvers Black One into the primary oscillator of Starkiller Base.

///

_Rey… These are your first steps._

Every nerve in her body catches fire; heat pools in her fingertips, an itch she can't ignore. The wind whips her hair into her face, and the earth begins to quake in truth. Without thinking, Rey throws out a hand for Luke Skywalker's lightsaber, _pulling_. The weapon finds her hand, familiar though she's held it only once.

Ren wheels around to face her, and Rey throws an arm up instinctively; the snow at her feet freezes in an instant, a dozen icy knives suddenly flying at Ren's face. He counters with a wall of flash-fire, the wave of heat reaching Rey as their blades meet for the first time.

The world slows, narrows until it contains only the two of them. In the movement of Ren's arms, Rey can see his next move, and she brings up her lightsaber to counter. She stomps her foot and twists, raising the ground beneath his feet, using the moment of disrupted balance to push him back with an overhead blow. Ren stumbles back, blocking desperately, catching the sparks thrown by the clash in one hand and flicking them into her face.

Blinded by the flash, skin stinging, Rey blocks by instinct; a gust of freezing air past her face blows the next round of sparks away as she regains her footing. She can see him re-center himself, breathe deeply and straighten against the pain of his wound before he rushes her again, relentless and stronger than she can hope to be. He pushes her back, back, back into the trees.

They both freeze as the earth quakes, bucking beneath them; Rey knows what is coming without sight, but she turns one eye to it. Almost at her heels, the ground begins to crumble inward—the planet opens its gaping maw at the feet of their conflict.

The heat at Rey's back is nearly unbearable, and she can feel the strength Ren pulls from the fury of the burning chasm as he brings his flickering lightsaber down overhead. She barely brings her own blade up in time, one foot sliding back toward the edge with the force of it. Ren's lightsaber shoots out a shower of sparks, its barely-contained energy sending vibrations down her arms as she struggles to keep her stance.

"You need a teacher!" Ren roars. "I can show you the ways of the Force!" Their embattled blades press closer to Rey's face.

"The Force." That echo again. She hardly realizes she speaks. That voice in her ear, and the island. She closes her eyes and the world stills around her.

Fire at her back, bare inches from her face, pooling in Kylo Ren's palms around the battered hilt of his lightsaber. Wind caressing her face, heated breezes tugging at her clothes. Water at her feet, melting snow and ice against her ankles; Finn collapsed on the ground so far out of her reach. Earth below her, caving in on itself, unstable but still ready to answer her call.

Within her, that immovable center. Roots, bright light, leaves reaching up toward the sun.

When she opens her eyes again, she is already pushing his blade to the side, holding her own with one hand while she holds the other toward the ground, keeping it steady beneath her while she presses her attack. Ren falls back beneath her onslaught. He hauls himself back up, but with one twist of her lightsaber she hits the hilt of his out of his hand; its hissing red light extinguishes as it flies through the air. Rey doesn't look to see where it lands, striking and striking again.

Flesh sizzles and Ren screams. He crumples into the snow, staring up at her through gloved fingers pressed tightly to his face. The raw wound smokes; his eyes go wide with fear.

That predator roars, and she stands before him, lightsaber clutched tight, chest heaving. He reaches out for his saber. She stands above him, and here in this moment his life is in her hands. Her grip tightens.

Rey's right foot comes down hard—the earth shudders in response. Again, and the surface cracks. Once more, and another rift opens, this one between her and Ren. Her left hand forms a fist, the fingers slowly straightening to stiffness as the chasm widens. Across from her Ren roars his rage and his fear; magma shoots high into the air from the planet's depths.

Rey clips her lightsaber to her belt and turns her back on him, running through the trees in search of Finn.

///

The planet below is imploding; swarms of First Order ships stream from the atmosphere. General Organa has given the command to what remains of the squadron not to harry them further—it's not worth more losses. Still, Poe hovers at the edge of atmo, watching. Waiting.

At the last second, just as he's about to turn around and order retreat, he sees it: the _Millennium Falcon_ , rising from the burning trees.

"All teams! I got eyes on 'em!" A cheer goes up across the comms, and finally Poe marks the jump to hyperspace; the _Falcon_ follows.

Behind them, Starkiller Base becomes waves upon waves of sunlight, spilling out in every direction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And lo, this fic has not been abandoned!
> 
> If you've stuck around this long, thank you. August was dedicated entirely to a family crisis that didn't resolve for four months; in September I adopted a dog, and then in November I moved into an apartment without internet. And then after all of that, once I finally got really settled on my feet, this past March I broke my finger in two places while working, so I'm still in intensive physical therapy to recover after major surgery for that. Please know that I read every comment you guys left while I was away, and I'll probably reply now that I've got stable internet set up. Writing has been hard lately, but it's kept me sane, and I love that there are other people out there who love this crazy thing I've made.
> 
> One more chapter to go in this particular piece, more an epilogue than anything else, and then we're venturing out into uncharted territory! There will be character pieces; there will be fluffy, shippy nonsense; there will probably be some exploration into how this world actually works in my head.
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com)! I'm open to prompts and excited flailing.
> 
> Title and chapter title from AURORA's _Conqueror_.


	7. The sky is open

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The familiarity sparks as soon as they drop out of hyperspace, tugging at something Rey is only beginning to identify as the Force—a connection within her, that green and growing thing in her chest. It yawns and stretches, reaching out for the inexorable pull of the approaching planet.

The thrill of hyperspace is dampened under the weight of the _Millennium Falcon's_ hush. Chewbacca sits tensely in the pilot's seat; Rey co-pilots long enough to plot the _Falcon's_ trajectory before she unstraps from her seat and goes to Finn's side. There is no standard med-bay on the ship, so Finn lies motionless on the long galley table. Rey sits on a bench beside him, staring.

It seems wrong to touch him, even though her fingers itch for the contact, so she pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around them instead. Rey can't remember the last time she cried; tears are a luxury no one can afford, even for the dead or dying. _Finn will live_ , she thinks, rocking gently back and forth.

Tears spill over completely beyond her control. When she wipes them away with the back of her hand, waste never crosses her mind.

///

As soon as the _Falcon's_ ramp is down, Resistance personnel swarm the entrance. Chewbacca walks ahead with Finn cradled gently in his massive arms; the medics rush to them, guiding Finn's body down onto a stretcher. They take off at a run, and Rey watches as an orange-clad pilot follows them closely, his eyes fixed on Finn.

There's a small woman standing stock-still amidst all the chaos. Chewie reaches out for her shoulder but drops his hand with a sad shake of his head; he wanders slowly toward the base and a path opens for him. Rey staggers down the ramp blindly, stopping a few steps from the woman. The softness between her and Chewbacca and the reverential glances from the people around the base tell Rey this is another legend—Leia Organa: senator, rebel, general, every inch cut from the same material as Han Solo. It makes her want to collapse all over again.

A familiar spark catches when their eyes meet—the same fire, banked and smoldering, waiting for the right moment to blaze brightly. They step forward at the same time, wrapping their arms around each other and holding tight. Rey can't begin to fathom the water soaking into the fabric at the General's shoulder as the grief flows between them.

///

The star-map hovers in the middle of the war room like a beacon, the two droids holding the image as still as they can. The room erupts into cheers and applause, every member of the Resistance swept up in a tide of excitement.

Pure joy rushes through Poe and he whoops with the flood of unrepressed emotion all through the room, wrapping his arms around the nearest person, lifting them up and spinning wildly a few times before he realizes what he's doing. Poe steps back, hands at his sides, a sheepish smile on his face; he can feel himself flushing from the energy of it all. "Uh, hi," he mumbles. "I'm Poe."

It's the scavenger girl, the one Finn found on Jakku; she's given General Organa and her staff a rough outline of what happened at Starkiller Base: the torture and her rescue by Finn and Han and Chewbacca.

(There was a kind of silence in the room Poe had only ever experienced in the depths of space when Rey recounted the death of Han Solo; General Organa swayed for a matter of seconds under the weight of the confirmation, and all gathered looked away. Her knuckles white where they gripped the console in front of her, the general had straightened and bid the girl continue.)

She's holding something back, Poe can tell that much, but he doesn't know if it's basic information excised for the sake of time or something else. Details of her initial escape are hazy, but the general allows her to keep them for the time being, and Poe doesn't hold it against her—how can he, with everything she's done? Holding off Kylo Ren with Luke Skywalker's lightsaber (with Finn's help, she'd insisted repeatedly, she couldn't have done it without Finn, and kriff, the thought of it all makes Poe's heart clench, but those two facing down that monster, alone in the snow? It's too much for this moment, and he tucks it away), it sounds like something from a holonovel, it's awe-inspiring, and how can she hover at the fringes of this meeting like it's nothing, like she isn't part of it—the reason for it all?

She's staring at him, and Poe wonders how much of his thoughts just flashed across his face, or if she's still baffled by the hug. Her lips twist into a small smile, though, and she stays near him. "I recognize the name. So you're Poe. Poe Dameron, the X-Wing pilot. I'm Rey."

"I know," he says, swallowing back a comment about how _everyone on the base_ knows; he likes her already, and he wants her to like him, so instead he says, "Nice to meet you."

///

In the desert, stillness is death. It's easy to be lulled to stillness by thirst and exhaustion, the deep ache of walking on constantly shifting sands, the oppressive heat of the sun or the bone-deep chill of the night. But you keep moving, and you stay alive.

Finn lies absolutely motionless on the bed in the med-bay. Doctor Kalonia told her all about the coma they'd induced to keep him from injuring his spine further, but Rey can't shake her fear of his eerie stillness as he sleeps.

Poe Dameron sleeps, too, his hair and uniform rumpled, keeping watch from a chair near the bedside. He didn't want Finn to wake up alone, he'd told her last night while they ate together in the hall outside the ICU. He wants to be here, to see him wake up, to let him know he's safe.

It's not that easy, because it's barely twelve hours later and here Rey is, preparing to leave. She wonders, briefly, if there is anything she could give to be allowed to stay here with him—whether maybe, if she knew more of the Force, she could break off a piece of herself to leave with him always.

Rey lets go of his hand for the first time in what feels like hours, and leans down to kiss his forehead, smoothing his hair. "We'll see each other again," she says. "I believe that. Thank you, my friend."

She trails her fingers gently over Poe's shoulder as she leaves the room, studying the soft lines of his sleeping face and pressing them into the pages of her mind alongside Finn's and General Organa's.

///

The star-map calls this planet Ahch-To, and its presence rings in Rey's bones before the _Falcon_ breaks atmosphere. The familiarity sparks as soon as they drop out of hyperspace, tugging at something Rey is only beginning to identify as the Force—a connection within her, that green and growing thing in her chest. It yawns and stretches, reaching out for the inexorable pull of the approaching planet.

Takodana had been green and heavy, rich with dark earth and sticky air.

Ahch-To…

Ahch-To takes her breath away. Rey barely notices Chewbacca taking control of the ship's descent as she drinks in every detail of the crashing waves—such an unbelievable amount of water—and stony islands passing beneath them.

With her feet planted on solid stone familiar to her as her own skin, Rey reaches out with one hand, trying to ignore the feeling of Chewbacca and R2-D2 watching from behind her. A flick of her wrist brings a few chipped pebbles bouncing into her palm. She rattles them between her hands as she takes her first steps toward the mountain path, her staff a comforting weight at her back.

///

Rey follows the endless serpentine path of ancient steps almost blindly, stopping occasionally to feel the texture of a stone wall beneath her hands or re-evaluate her mental map of the island, committing to memory landmarks in the form of derelict structures older than anything she'd seen on Jakku. She never pauses for long, though—whatever draws her on pulls incessantly, almost nipping at her heels to keep her moving.

For a moment when she crests the rise of the steps and finds herself in a grassy clearing, Rey wonders if the whole world has cracked open and spilled itself at her feet. She can see the ocean, dotted with islands, for what might be miles in every direction, blue sky bleeding into everything it touches. The wind whipping at her hair brings with it scents of salt and moss and a sweet, astringent smell that must come from the scrubby trees she'd glimpsed on parts of the island.

Something nudges her shoulder and Rey spins, sending a tremor through the ground at her feet; nothing lingers beside her, but the gentle hands of the Force guide her forward with light pushes at the small of her back.

There, still as stone.

The figure turns to her and the wind rises in the clearing, whipping around them as he pulls back his hood. Rey's heart clenches, her throat tight, the ground rumbling as she takes a single step.

_Luke Skywalker_ , whispers a voice at her ear, and he is staring into her from the edge of the island, every thread of her old dreams finally woven together around them. Small breezes tug at the hem of his cloak and the ends of his silver hair. His face is still, but something stirs in the fathomless depths of his eyes. He does not speak.

Rey remains where she stands, focusing on her breaths until they match the heartbeat rhythm of the waves all around them. The earth stills. She closes her eyes, wills her rushing blood to calm. The wind shifts out of her face. When she looks again, Luke Skywalker stares at her still. She reaches into her satchel, feels the electric surge of power and promise as her fingers brush the warm hilt of the lightsaber.

Again, the winds rise, roaring around her as she stands steady among the rocks.

She holds out her hand, offering everything to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are, almost two years later, with Episode VIII right around the corner.  
> I didn't expect this chapter to take so long, but for some reason I just couldn't make it work to my satisfaction for the longest time, and life, as usual, got in the way big time. But this is the longest thing I've ever written, and by far the biggest project I've ever completed.
> 
> This isn't the end! Now that this part is complete, we are going to veer off in many new directions (Rogue One! Force Ghosts! Avatar-Rey adventures!) and actually get that OT3 fluff I promised when I started out. This is my pet project, and I'm not giving up on it.
> 
> If you want to keep up with me/the story, or you want to see all of my interests thrown at a brightly-colored wall, or you wanna yell about stuff with me, come hit me up on [tumblr](http://shootthewendybird.tumblr.com). May the Force be with you.
> 
> Title from AURORA's _Conqueror_.


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